The GOP’s mantra on energy is “we shouldn’t pick winners and losers.” But all one needs to do is look at Republican legislative priorities to see how hollow that slogan is.

A series of bills currently being considered in Congress make it very clear that House Republicans are attempting to stack the deck in favor of the fossil fuel industry.

Heck, they don’t even try to hide it.

They assume the “we shouldn’t pick winners and losers” line provides enough of a distraction to give them room to write bills stripping funding for clean energy and promote massive increases in fossil fuel extraction.

Next week is a big one for the most anti-environmental House of Representatives in the history of Congress. As outlined in a recent memo from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), GOP leaders will attempt to pass a sweeping piece of legislation that will open up far more federal lands to drilling.

The bill, called the Strategic Energy Production Act, combines a variety of proposals to roll back EPA safeguards, require more drilling on public lands, and speed up leasing for oil and gas extraction. It’s part of a legislative drumbeat in support of fossil fuels that House Republicans are trying to maintain through the beginning of the summer.

Seeing as how Republicans don’t like picking winners and losers, opening up America to all that drilling would mean maintaining support of clean, renewable sources of energy, right?

Of course not.

Next week’s push for more drilling on public lands follows a series of anti-clean energy amendments adopted into a House water and energy spending bill last week. Those amendments include steep cuts to efficiency programs, a key wind R&D program, clean car rules for federal vehicles, and international commitments to developing countries. Heck, even energy efficiency targets for shower heads weren’t spared in the spending bill.

Rather than balance out these cuts with subsequent cuts to fossil fuels, the bill actually increases R&D spending on fossil fuel technologies by 60 percent.

Maria Gallucci of Inside Climate News documented the 13 different cuts to clean energy programs. Here’s a rundown of some of the programs that lawmakers want to get rid of (see the full story for background on the various programs on the chopping block):

• National R&D initiative for wind technologies. Sponsor: Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
• Federal requirements for zero-carbon buildings. Sponsor: Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.)
• Federal ban on carbon-intensive fuels. Sponsor: Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas)
• International spending on clean energy initiatives. Sponsor: Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)
• Federal efficiency standards for light bulbs. Sponsor: Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas)
• 40-year old efficiency requirement for DOE grant winners. Sponsor: Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.)
• 20-year old efficiency standards for showerheads. Sponsor: David Schweikert (R-Ariz.)
• Efficiency standards for battery chargers. Sponsor: Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.)

As our lawmakers attempt to open up every square inch of America to more drilling rigs, they’re also working to systematically dismantle any program that helps reduce our energy intensity or helps us transition to cleaner sources energy. The remarkable thing is that some of these effective programs are decades old, have come from Republican administrations, and have never been seen as stripping away consumer rights.

This is the fantasy land that many House Republicans are living in today. By throwing around phrases like “not picking winners and losers” and “protecting individual choice,” they’re attempting to set up a smokescreen for their blatant promotion of fossil fuels and disdain for anything that would disrupt the status quo.

Those mantras are nothing more than political code for more dirty energy, less clean energy, and doing nothing about climate change.

by Clint Wilder, via Clean Edge

• Six states, twice as many as last year, now generate more than 10 percent of their utility-scale electricity from wind, solar, and/or geothermal. Topping the list for percent of in-state, utility-scale generation from renewables in 2011 were South Dakota (22.3 percent), Iowa (18.8 percent), and North Dakota (14.7 percent).
• The number of registered hybrid cars in the U.S. grew to nearly 2 million while all-electric vehicles neared the 50,000 registered-vehicle milestone. California had nearly half a million hybrids and more than 22,000 pure EVs registered at the end of 2011.
• The 29 states with renewable portfolio standards, along with Washington, D.C., account for nearly two-thirds of the nation’s total generating capacity.
• California’s clean-energy venture capital dollars in 2011 – more than $3.7 billion – exceeded the total of all the other 49 states combined.
• Clean-energy patents granted to U.S. entities in 2011 exceeded the 1,000 mark for the first time. Such patents were granted in 32 states, although more than half of them were distributed across just three states: California, New York, and Michigan.
• The top five states in our Index are perennial clean-energy leaders California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington, and Colorado. But many states from coast to coast demonstrate leadership in different aspects of clean energy. The top 25 includes such key election-year ‘swing states’ as New Mexico, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.

Nationwide, U.S. solar installations grew 109 percent, adding 1,855 megawatts of new PV to the grid ­– thanks to falling PV prices, favorable policies in key states, and the aggressive business strategies of installers/financiers like Solar City, SunRun, and SunEdison. U.S. wind capacity grew at a solid pace as well, with 6,816 MW of new capacity good for a 27 percent increase in wind-derived electricity generation over 2010. Perhaps even more significantly, 35 percent of all new U.S. power capacity in the past five years has been from wind. Government and private capital poured $48.1 billion into clean energy in the U.S. in 2011 – the total among asset financing, public market, venture capital, private equity investment, and spending on small distributed projects – regaining the nation’s position as the world’s largest clean-energy investor and dethroning China, which had held the top spot for the last two years. Even the jobs picture contained good news, with research published by the Brookings Institution showing the U.S. “clean economy” as one of the labor market’s few bright spots during the recession, growing by 8.3 percent from 2008 to 2009 – almost double the rate of the overall economy during the same time period. Read more

Sen. James Risch (R-ID) is one of many Republican Senators blocking the ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Photo: AP.

by Michael Conathan

Big Oil, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Lockheed Martin, some of the world’s biggest communications corporations, and the top brass of the U.S. military have been lobbying skeptical members on Capitol Hill to support an initiative they all feel is fundamental to U.S. interests—ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The treaty, initially completed in 1982 and then modified in the early 1990s to address concerns raised by the United States, codifies customary international law and establishes rules and methodologies detailing the rights and responsibilities of nations when it comes to use and protection of the world’s oceans. One hundred and sixty-two other countries have ratified it, and the United States remains the only industrialized nation that has not joined the international community. (Other nonsignatories include such heady company as North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Libya.)

Key provisions of the treaty include granting each nation sovereignty over its territorial sea (out to 12 miles from shore) and extraction rights to resources in its exclusive economic zone (out to 200 miles). It also establishes standards for freedom of navigation in other countries’ waters, as well as resource extraction on the high seas—the area outside any nation’s exclusive economic zone.

The treaty’s supporters swear U.S. ratification will boost U.S. national security, spur investment in new technologically advanced industries, and increase U.S. access to rare-earth metals we would otherwise have to buy from China and oil and gas we would otherwise source from the Middle East. Yet these supporters face ideologically entrenched opposition.

Given traditional relationships on Capitol Hill, logic would dictate that this pushback would come from Democrats. After all, they don’t comprise the party traditionally affiliated with defending Big Oil and mining companies’ interests.

In reality, however, the Law of the Sea faces a steep uphill battle for approval in the U.S. Senate from conservative Republicans “still trotting out long-discredited talking points,” according to Stewart M. Patrick, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Here’s a sample of how the balance of support comes down on this treaty:

Pro-ratification:

• Former Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and current President Barack Obama and his administration
• Five Republican former secretaries of state
• The current secretaries of defense and state, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R)
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• American Petroleum Institute
• Chamber of Shipping
• American Chemical Council
• Lockheed Martin
• AT&T, Verizon, and USTelecom
• One hundred and sixty-two other countries, including every other industrialized nation on the planet plus the European Union

Anti-ratification:

• The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and other conservative think tanks
• Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, and a handful of other less developed nations

Not much of a balance.

How is it that conservative senators who trust their corporate and military allies to guide them through virtually every other policy decision have suddenly decided their best buddies are so clearly wrong on this one particular issue? Let’s look at the most popular arguments against ratification.

Ratification will not sacrifice U.S. sovereignty

Since the endorsement of virtually every living U.S. military leader doesn’t seem to be sufficient to penetrate the web of deceit and paranoia woven by treaty opponents, my colleague Nina Hachigian penned a concise piece debunking their claims. She focuses primarily on the clear need to ratify the treaty to strengthen our position in negotiations with China over its claims to massive amounts of territory in the South China Sea.

Read more

by Max Frankel

Biofuels have fallen out of favor in many environmental and political circles. But in the world of science, researchers around the world are working on some very innovative ways to produce gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from more sustainable feedstocks.

Here’s a look at three cool recent developments in biofuels:

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em: Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California are working on converting tobacco plants into fuel powerhouses. The project is funded by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The scientists selected the plant because tobacco is “grown in large tracts throughout the U.S and in more than 100 countries. It generates multiple harvests per year, its large leaves could store a lot of fuel, and it’s amenable to genetic engineering.”

Tobacco has huge potential because it produces very high yields. The Berkeley lab estimates “that about 1000 acres of tobacco could yield more than one million gallons of fuel.”

Currently, tobacco is one of the most ubiquitous plants in the American south. But as sales of commercial tobacco products fall demand for the crop is declining (a good chart from Canada is here). It’s possible that this new use for the product could stimulate the industry for the benefit of our health, not the detriment. Tobacco grown for biofuel purposes can be planted at up to 16 times the density of tobacco planted for consumption, so fields already producing the plant could vastly increase production to meet potential future need.

The Berkeley scientists are working on creating tobacco plants that maximize the uptake of CO2 and sunlight and the production of fats and oils. Check it out:

Bottoms up: The Scotch Wiskey Association of Scotland is currently constructing a nearly $100 million combined heat and power plant capable of generating up to 7.2 megawatts of electricity from nothing but whiskey byproducts.

Read more

Brookings has released a new survey that confirms other recent polls: Public understanding of climate science is rebounding, and the recent record-smashing extreme weather events are playing a key role.

As you can see, the biggest jump is from independents, demonstrating once again that global warming has become a major wedge issue. Many other recent polls have made that clear (see “Gallup poll: Public understanding of global warming gains” and “Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming”). Now if progressive politicians would only seize on this winning issue.

Perhaps even more remarkable than this rebound in understanding is the record rise in the public’s confidence in their accurate understanding of climate science that the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change [NSAPOCC] found:

Just under two thirds of those who believe global warming is occurring stated that they were very confident of this position. This 63 percent confidence level is 14 percentage points higher than in the fall of 2011 and marks the highest level since the NSAPOCC began in 2008.

Why would confidence be growing, especially when the media and key opinion-makers have all but stopped talking about climate change?

Brookings had previously found that Americans’ Understanding of Climate Change Is Increasing With More Extreme Weather, Warmer Temperatures. Certainly the American public is seeing for themselves the off-the-chart heat waves and other extreme weather that climate scientists have long said would become more common as we pour more heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (see NOAA Chief: U.S. Record of a Dozen Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters in One Year Is “a Harbinger of Things to Come”). That was especially true in March (see “March Came In Like A Lamb, Went Out Like A Globally Warmed Lion On Steroids Who Smashed 15,000 Heat Records“).

The new survey added further evidence that “the growth in the percentage of Americans who see evidence of global warming appears to be related to individual perceptions of weather conditions and events.”:

During the cold and snowy winters of 2010 and 2011 the percentage of respondents who indicated that their experiences with milder winters had a very large effect on their views about global warming was relatively low with 19 percent and 17 percent of respondents selecting this response. Conversely, about twice as many respondents in the latest NSAPOCC reported that the mild winter had a large effect on their view that planetary temperatures are rising.

The effect of the milder winter conditions were also evident in many of the openended comments that respondents provided to the question regarding the primary factor behind their belief that global warming was occurring. For example, a middle-aged male from Connecticut stated that “there was no winter this year,” and a young woman in Maryland noted that “the seasons are abnormal with no snow and cold.” When asked to provide the key factor behind her view that global warming was occurring a middle-aged woman in Wisconsin said that her “garden was already growing in March.”

Even though extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity, the close relationship between weather and beliefs about global warming can potentially make public opinion fickle over the short term — particularly since the continental United States comprises only a tiny fraction of the world and thus its weather is even more erratic than the Earth’s climate as a whole.

But that may be less of a concern if meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters is correct that “The climate has shifted to a new state capable of delivering rare & unprecedented weather events.”

People are starting to connect the dots. Now if only policymakers can start doing the same.

Related Story:

• Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent
• Poll: Large Majority Of Americans Understand Global Warming Made Several Major Extreme Weather Events Worse

This report was originally published at Climate Central

Global warming isn’t uniform. The continental U.S. has warmed by about 1.3°F over the past 100 years, but the temperature increase hasn’t been the same everywhere: some places have warmed more than others, some less, and some not much at all. Natural variability explains some of the differences, and air pollution with fine aerosols screening incoming solar radiation could also be a factor.

The Temperature Change from 1912-2011:

The Temperature Change since 1970:

Our state-by-state analysis of warming over the past 100 years shows where it warmed the most and where it warmed the least. We found that no matter how much or how little a given state warmed over that 100-year period, the pace of warming in all regions accelerated dramatically starting in the 1970s, coinciding with the time when the effect of greenhouse gases began to overwhelm the other natural and human influences on climate at the global and continental scales.

We looked at average daily temperatures for the continental 48 states from 1912 to the present, and also from 1970 to the present and found:

• Over the past 100 years, the top 10 states warmed 60 times faster than the bottom 10 (0.26°F per decade vs. 0.004°F per decade), when looking at average mean temperatures. During this timeframe, 45 states showed warming trends, although 21 were not statistically significant. Three states experienced a slight cooling trend.
• Since 1970, warming began accelerating everywhere. The speed of warming across the lower 48 more than tripled, from 0.127°F per decade over the 100-year period, to 0.435°F per decade since 1970, while the gap between the fast and slowly warming states narrowed significantly; the 10 fastest warming states heated up just twice as fast, not 60 times as fast as the 10 slowest warming states (0.60°F vs. 0.30°F per decade). Over the past 42 years 17 states warmed more than half a degree F per decade.
• The states that have warmed the most — whether you look at the past 100 years or just the past 40 — include northern-tier states from Minnesota to Maine and the Southwest, particularly Arizona and New Mexico. Places that have warmed the least include Southeast states, like Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, along with parts of the central Midwest, like Iowa and Nebraska.

This piece was originally published at Climate Central and was reprinted with permission.

Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney begins a 5-day bus tour on Friday. He’ll cross six different states, focusing on economic issues and the “ordinary concerns of the American people.”

As he has throughout the campaign, Romney will likely talk about why he doesn’t believe that clean energy is good for the country. In recent months, the Romney campaign has attacked American renewable energy companies, lied about the clean energy stimulus, and called American green jobs “illusory” — even with 64,000 clean energy jobs in his home state of Massachusetts.

In fact, those jobs are far from illusory. In the six states that Romney plans to visit on his bus tour, there are nearly half a million green jobs across a diverse range of sectors like wind, solar, land conservation, green buildings, and waste-to-energy.

According to 2010 data compiled by the Brookings Institution, there are 418,512 green jobs in the states on Romney’s bus tour. Below is a breakdown of the number of jobs and wage figures as documented by Brookings:

• New Hampshire: Home to 12,886 green jobs. The median wage for a green collar worker in New Hampshire is $2,116 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.
• Ohio: Home to 105,306 green jobs. The median wage for a green collar worker in Ohio is $3,566 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.
• Pennsylvania: Home to 118,686 clean jobs. The median wage for a green collar worker in Pennsylvania is $2,327 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.
• Wisconsin: Home to 76,858 clean jobs. The median wage for a green collar worker in Wisconsin is $2,025 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.
• Iowa: Home to 30,835 clean jobs. The median wage for a green collar worker in Iowa is $2,399 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.
• Michigan: Home to 76,941 clean jobs. The median wage for a green collar worker in Michigan is $2,564 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.

As the Brookings Institution figures show, these jobs pay more, offer more export opportunities, and are growing at a much faster rate than the rest of the economy. More importantly, nearly half of all these jobs are held by workers with a high school diploma or less.

Jobs that benefit the environment are increasingly becoming a part of “ordinary” life in America. As Romney begins his bus tour, will he continue to call these jobs “illusory?”

Max Frankel contributed to this story.

Related Post:

• Independents Support Federal Investment in “Green Jobs” 2-to-1 (9/11):

“In dozens of focus groups we have conducted this month across the country on a wide variety of subjects, when voters are asked where they would like new jobs in their state to come from, the first words out of their mouths are almost always the same – clean energy and related technology.  Voters believe that the clean energy economy is here and is growing, and they want their state to have a part of it.“

Severn Suzuki, the "girl who silenced the world for six minutes"

by Bill Becker

It was 20 years ago this month that Severn Suzuki, then 12, gave the speech of her life. As she stood on the podium at the first Earth Summit, facing dignitaries from 178 nations, Severn’s 6-minute statement also became the speech of her generation.

The topic was sustainable development. The place was Rio de Janeiro, where heads of state, delegates and negotiators from 178 nations assembled to consider how humankind and the rest of the natural world could co-exist, to the everlasting benefit of both.

Ten years later, Severn recalled the experience and assessed the world’s progress in a column for TIME magazine:

“I am only a child,” I told them. “Yet I know that if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this would be. In school you teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? You grownups say you love us, but I challenge you, please, to make your actions reflect your words.”

I spoke for six minutes and received a standing ovation. Some of the delegates even cried. I thought that maybe I had reached some of them, that my speech might actually spur action. Now, a decade from Rio, after I’ve sat through many more conferences, I’m not sure what has been accomplished. My confidence in the people in power and in the power of an individual’s voice to reach them has been deeply shaken.

This month is the 20-year anniversary of the Earth Summit. On June 20, international negotiators and heads of state will meet again in Rio to assess progress and discuss new commitments. The theme of Rio+20, as the conference is unofficially called, is “The Future We Want” – an invocation, perhaps, of Buckminster Fuller’s admonition that “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.”

Severn’s name today is Severn Cullis-Suzuki. She is married and has her own child. If she were invited back to the podium at Rio+20, what would she say? We asked her. Green Cross International taped her answer for The Future We Want project.

Among many other points, she repeats what she told negotiators in 1992: Achieve intergenerational justice by making your actions reflect your words.

There have been many more words than actions these past 20 years. The Earth Summit produced Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Statement of Forest Principles, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. New institutions were created, including the Commission on Sustainable Development, the Inter-Agency Committee on Sustainable Development and the High-Level Advisory Board on Sustainable Development.

Yet in a report released last week, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded that the world “continues to speed down an unsustainable path despite over 500 internationally agreed goals and objectives to support the sustainable management of the environment and improve human wellbeing.” Significant progress has been made on only four of the 90 most important commitments to sustainability, UNEP reported.

At Rio+20, about 130 heads of state and government, along with more than 50,000 leaders in business, cities and non-government groups, are expected. Among them will be thousands of young people, the Severns of today. I expect that many of them are full of hope, while others are frustrated that they are being handed a world in which security, peace, genuine prosperity, social justice and sustainability remain aspirations rather than realities. Read more

A round-up of the top climate and energy stories. Please post additional links below.

Solar installations in the United States jumped 85 percent in the first quarter of 2012 from the previous year, according to an industry report that prompted a research firm and a lobbying group to raise their capacity forecasts for the year. [Reuters]

In a paper published June 12 in the journal Nature Communications, UCLA researchers and colleagues reveal that not long after the last ice age, the last woolly mammoths succumbed to a lethal combination of climate warming, encroaching humans and habitat change — the same threats facing many species today. [Science Daily]

Climate warming across the Lower 48 is speeding up. That’s the take home message of a new report released today by Climate Central, a science communication non-profit group. [Weather Gang]

Mitt Romney slams President Barack Obama for using taxpayer dollars to pick “winners and losers” among green energy firms rather than allowing them to rise or fall in the free market. Yet as governor of Massachusetts, Romney backed a state program that targeted investments to individual green startup companies in hopes of boosting jobs and the state’s revenues. [Washington Post]

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), an influential energy policymaker, appeared to reverse his position on renewable energy in a debate with GOP challenger Jack Hoogendyk on Sunday, telling a Western Michigan University audience he believes in government support for “all the alternative energy policies.” [Huffington Post]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation of officials to the United Nation’s sustainability conference in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22, the State Department said Tuesday, signaling a stronger U.S. commitment to the summit. [Reuters]

The world’s most prestigious cancer research group on Tuesday classified diesel engine exhaust as carcinogenic to humans and concluded that exposure is associated with increased risk of lung cancer. [Los Angeles Times]

Twenty years after trying and failing to halt humanity’s destruction of our planet, the governments of the world will gather again in Rio this month for a “once-in-a-generation” Earth Summit that will open with great fanfare but low expectations of success. [Guardian]